Nightwish tell tales of DarkPassion

Mon 4th Feb, 2008 in Features

When it comes to line-up changes in successful bands it is always a gamble, especially when it comes to the lead vocalist position.

In the world of hard rock and heavy metal, you can probably count on one hand the number of bands that have successfully transitioned from one singer to the next. When the already hugely popular Nightwish decided to part ways with original vocalist Tarja Turunen by slipping her a note after a show, many fans believed they would never recover. But after an exhaustive search, Nightwish has returned to Australia almost three years after the band’s first visit. This not only showcases a new vocalist and a stellar new album in Dark Passion Play – but also a brand new outlook for a band that according to Tuomas Holopainen, who is the keyboardist and main composer behind Nightwish that believes that the band is at the very forefront of it’s musical journey.

Now if you haven’t been following the story, the saga of Nightwish has been a bit of a soap opera of sorts for the last four years. As previously mentioned Tarja was unceremoniously and literally given her walking papers following a show and starting the next day, every female hard rock singer under the sun has been rumoured to have scored the illustrious gig. In actuality, the position was handed over to the talented and Swedish born Anette Olzon, but that was kept under wraps for quite a long time.

“We needed to keep Annette a secret for a few months”, states Holopainen. “This was never to tease the fans or the media. It was not a publicity stunt of any kind. We just wanted to not reveal her before we would have something to play for the people. We were just thinking if we reveal her identity in February, people would judge her simply on what she has done before. We really thought it would be the fairest towards her so that when we announce her that we would have some new material. But keeping it a secret was like some CIA secrets.”

“Every time we would fly somewhere, she would stay in the back of the plane”, he continues. “We wouldn’t acknowledge each other. She always stayed at different hotels in Helsinki; we were never seen in public. When we recorded the vocals we did it in a countryside studio, it was really secret. I even said in many interviews we were going to record the vocals abroad, it was a white lie so to speak. I really didn’t enjoy that time, it was annoying. It was especially hard for Annette because there were only two people in the world she told, her husband and her brother. We didn’t want to take any chances. It was such a relief to finally reveal her.”

Anette almost didn’t get the job at all. While she was one of the chosen few under consideration for the vocal spot, she told the band that she did have a small child at home. She was quickly rejected before cooler heads prevailed and eventually she won the job.

“Yeah absolutely, I turned her down once in February of 2006. We were impressed with her voice and she seems like a nice girl, but then she told us that she had a four-year-old son. I told her immediately, we were not going to take the chance. I said to her sorry, but good for us she was very stubborn and convinced us that it would be no problem.”

As the media worldwide offered every imaginable female singer from the hard rock and metal genres to have been Tarja’s replacement, in the bands hometown, the press in Finland had an absolute field day falsely reporting one lady after another of assuming the mantle.

“It was pretty much everybody, Sharon from Within Temptation, Simone from Epica, Floor from After Forever. We even heard Amy Lee from Evanescence at some point. They kept saying we have a source that says this will be the new singer. In the end, the media ate their own credibility because nobody believe anything, it became like a public joke.”

But did the band ever consider snatching one of these better-known singers? Or was the idea of getting an unknown more enticing?

“We didn’t care about the nationality, we didn’t care if she was famous or not, we were just looking for the right girl. We just wanted the right personality and the right voice. We never approached anybody either. Everybody that was mentioned, they all have their own bands, we weren’t into anything like that. We were just checking out the demos and relying on that.”

Stepping into the role of fronting one of Europe’s most successful and most beloved bands must surely be a daunting task. But according to Tuomas – the charismatic gentleman who aesthetically shares the appearance to Pirate Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, their new singer is taking it all in her stride.

“Day by day, she is getting better and better in the role”, says Tuomas. “In the name of honesty, I have to say when we made the decision; nobody was like 100% about anything. We only had met her twice, we had only known her for like five days, and there is only so much you know about a person.”

“As far as the band is concerned, being in Australia right now playing for such receiving and wonderful audiences, the feeling is really, really good. We love her voice; it fits perfectly to the new songs as well as the old songs. She has a really charming personality. She is the most ordinary person, and I say this in a good way. There is not the slightest bit of dramatic elements that could annoy anybody, nothing like that.”

The listener is instantly drawn into the mesmerizing music contained within from the very first track on the new release. “The Poet and the Pendulum”, which opens Dark Passion Play is a huge sprawling epic that clocks in at an impressive 13 minutes. It almost would have seemed to be easier to break it up into smaller parts, at least as far as the listener is concerned.

“But the story that I had in mind is so long that I knew from the beginning it had to be one”, responds Tuomas. “I knew it’s going to take a long and heavy song to tell this story. The fact that we put it as the first track on the album was pretty much we just avoiding cliché’s. Usually you put the longest song at the last; we wanted to avoid the cliché’s give a little bit of shock to the listener immediately. Again in the name of honesty, it’s kind of like a show off; we can do whatever we want musically. We are still here, we are strong and we do things in our own way.”

While having recorded the most expensive album in Finnish history, the band would consider this fact minor, as the music serves a purpose to carry itself without fans being concerned with the amount of money used in its creation.

“Yes. While it is the most expensive album made in Finnish history, this does not make it the greatest album. It really was not a planned to spend so much money – but all things considered – after paying for the studio and orchestra it really doesn’t seem to extravagant.”

The band recorded the orchestral arrangements for Dark Passion Play at Abbey Road Studios in London where Tuomas is convinced the ghost of John Lennon can still be felt.

“Its almost as if your expecting to see him in every turn. Its quiet strange. I am not a the greatest fan of the Beatles, I like allot of the songs and I respect them very much and adore everything they achieved – but they were not a part of me growing up – there are band that mean the world to me but the Beatles are not one of them.”

Naturally, the band had an anxious wait for the album to be released after recording was completed. This was a period of public uncertainty – while the band remained confidant that fans would not only accept but also embrace the bands new album along with a new vocalist.

“Before the album was released everybody was anxious to get on that tour bus and start touring. It’s going to be pretty hard, especially for her being the new person in the band. The tour will last until mid 2009. But it’s also the thing that we love from the bottom of our hearts; it’s the love of my life, personally. I have nothing better to do; I don’t want to do anything else. Sometimes you will be really pissed, or really tired, but that’s part of the job. A job shouldn’t always be just fun, but I think we will manage. But I think we have learned from some of our past mistakes so we can take care of each other be a bit better. We can just talk about stuff and just take care of each other.”

Some bands falter under adversity, while others seize it as an opportunity to grow even further. Perhaps Nightwish is the Maiden of their breed in that respect.

Dark Passion Play is out Now by RoadRunner Records.